


Counting

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Multifandom Drabble Exchange, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-09 00:52:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15255807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: Tim meets a man in a bar.





	Counting

Tim Stoker had never been unhappy with his body before. Not until Prentiss. Not until the scars.

It's not that they look bad. He's assured by his physical therapist that they don't. She tells him he's lucky, and he knows he is. He just doesn't feel it. Tries to, tries to act like nothing had happened. Still goes out, but every night before he leaves, he finds himself standing in front of the mirror. Counting the scars.

They don't hurt. Not anymore. Not _physically_.

By the time he meets the man, he's drunk enough to assume the oddness of him is just paranoia, forces it from his mind. Covers the taste of it with cheap whiskey, blurs the idea of his face contorting to match Jon's, rejects the creeping suspicion that Martin hides from behind the teapot.

The man settles beside him at the bar. Tim ignores the odd angles that sit under his shirt. He opens his mouth to speak, and Tim interrupts.

"Don't care," he says. Would rather not have learn anything about him at all, but somewhere between the kisses against the wall and the teeth in Tim's neck, he introduces himself as J. Tim asks what sort of a name that is, and is told. He decides it doesn't really count as knowing who he is.

Jared's good in bed and gone by morning and that's all Tim wants in a partner right now.

Tim crumples the number left on his kitchen counter and thinks nothing more about it until the next time he's standing in front of the mirror. He counts his scars like always, almost without thought, until his mind snags on something. A wrongness.

He counts again, and again, and again, and nothing can change the fact that one of them is missing.


End file.
